


Smarter than the average super-soldier.

by Katefkndoes



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: I Don't Even Know, Secret!Relationship, There is a pairing in here, smart!steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-16
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2018-02-25 16:31:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2628425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katefkndoes/pseuds/Katefkndoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony tries to figure out how Steve manages to use the shield as well as he does.  He doesn't particularly like the answer he (eventually) gets.</p>
<p>(I suck at summaries.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smarter than the average super-soldier.

**Author's Note:**

> No beta so all mistakes are my own. Honestly, I'm not sure where I was going with this fic, I just like the idea that Steve is super-smart and Tony doesn't like it.

“Perfect.  Every single time.”  Tony muttered more to himself than anyone else, as though he hadn’t noticed Natasha’s presence despite the fact that they had been speaking only seconds before.  “JARVIS, re-run that hit.”  The AI did as instructed.  “Slow it two hundred percent.  And play back.”  Once again the image on the screen flicked back to the beginning of the video.  Personally, Natasha couldn’t see what was so fascinating about Steve’s shield rebounding off a surface and back into his hands.  It was impressive, but she had seen it _far_ too many times for it to hold her interest. 

“Stark…” she tried, not that she had any particular interest in speaking with him, it merely seemed appropriate to inform him that she was taking him up on the offer of a room in the tower.  She had put it off as long as possible, but since SHIELD had been obliterated and the government had started a smear campaign against The Avengers in general it seemed better to stick together – at least in the short term.

“See that Bruce, he makes the hit every single time.  There is almost zero room for error and he hits it every damn time.”  Stark continued to ignore her and Natasha raised her eyes skyward, as Bruce looked at her apologetically.

“I’ll see you around Doctor Banner.” 

“The variables enough on those hits are enough to give me a headache.  Force, torque, wind speed, surface contact, angle of impact to name a few and that’s just for one rebound, his shield can make four or five without missing.  It’s… impressive.”  Stark continued think aloud as Natasha made her hasty retreat.

 

*****

 

Steve’s shield rebounded off a nearby car and struck the doombot Natasha had failed to see from behind as the Captain ran past her in a red/blue blur. 

“Thanks.”  She muttered, as she concentrated on the attack she faced from the front.

“That should have been impossible.”  Stark muttered and Steve grunted in acknowledgement, entirely too focused on the seventy foot lizard-cum-bird, (a lizard like creature with feathers and wings, and damn if it wasn’t the ugliest thing they’d encountered in a long time,) that had been set loose on the city.  “How did you do it?” 

“Just lucky.”

“Bulls...”

“Stark!”  Steve’s voice cut him off, as the creature’s leg crashed down to ground just missing the super-soldier.  “A little help, please?”  Stark muttered something unintelligible down the coms before the creature was hit from the side with a repulser blast.  Steve took his moment and leapt onto the creatures back, bringing his shield down on its head and sending it tumbling to the ground, whether unconscious or dead Natasha couldn’t tell.

“Nice hit, Cap.  Big bird is out cold and the bots are retreating.  No sign of Doom.”  Steve rolled off the creature just as Iron Man landed in the debris surrounding Natasha. 

“Next time, it would be _appreciated_ if you could keep your head in the game.”  Steve said with a clipped tone.  Iron Man’s faceplate snapped back as Steve and Tony squared up to each other once again, and Natasha fought the urge to roll her eyes.  Her fellow Avengers, despite being friends, had an extremely adversarial relationship.

“Well if you just answered the _question.”_ Steve gritted his teeth and clenched his fist in annoyance as Tony stared at him with eyes full of challenge.  Natasha was fairly certain that she was going to have to intervene – again – when Clint dropped seemingly from nowhere on a zip line.  His arrival caused a pause in the impending argument, and Clint patted himself down.

“Lost something?”  Tony enquired, dragging his eyes away from his quarry briefly.

“No, but I’m pretty sure I’ve got a tape measure somewhere if you’d like to take turns with it?”  He smirked.  Stark opened his mouth a few times, but then burst out a laugh that cut through the tension as he slapped Cap on the shoulder. 

“What’s the matter Legolas, not sure you can measure up?”  Steve looked up from Iron Man’s hand, which was planted firmly on his shoulder, and shot Natasha a resigned look.

 

*****

 

“Are you going to tell me how you do it?”  Tony enquired as sweat beaded on his forehead.  Why he had thought it was a good idea to indulge Steve in a ‘friendly’ sparring session was completely beyond him?  Steve, the bastard, wasn’t even sweating.  Hell, he barely looked like the work-out bothered him.

“How I do what?”  Tony saw an opportunity and he took it, he faked left and swung his right fist, but Steve anticipated the move and used Tony’s own momentum against him, sending the engineer tumbling to the ground.  Tony blinked up from his new prone position on the mat, and groaned.

“The shield?”  He gasped, trying to catch his breath.

“Oh.”  Steve said with a shrug.

Tony opened his mouth to reply, but on the other side of the room Natasha dismounted from the balance beam, with the kind of enchanting grace that rendered both of the men mute.

*********

 

Tony had been like a dog with a bone since he realized just how complex some of the Captain’s throws were, and had become increasingly annoyed with the lack of suitable response.  Steve was running training drills with one of the sparring bots Tony had purposely designed to be a more worthy adversary for him.  The scientist watched as Steve’s shield ricocheted off the far side wall, off a set of free weights, back onto the side wall before making contact with the moving target’s head and sending the bot off balance and the shield back into Steve’s waiting hand.

Tony had finally had enough.

“JARVIS off.”  He instructed, and the blond whirled around to look at him.

“Tony,” he said by way of acknowledgement.

“How do you do it?”  Steve sighed.

“I just _do_ , Tony.”

“I mean, I could do it.”  Steve raised an eyebrow, but didn’t offer any additional comment.  “JARVIS could work out the sums and calculate the optimum trajectory.  But even then, it wouldn’t work every time.  There are just too many variables, the slightest inaccuracy in the aim and it just wouldn’t work.  Even JARVIS couldn’t get it right every time.  So how do _you_ do it?”  The sentiment probably wasn’t meant to be derogatory, but from her position on the yoga mats Natasha could see how Steve could take it badly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”  He said through clenched teeth.

“I mean, _I’m_ a genius, and you’re… well let’s just say you’re more of a heavy hitter.”  Natasha closed her eyes and waited for the sound of Tony hitting the mat.  Had it been any other Avenger, Tony would have hit the floor quicker than she could snap her fingers, but Steve was better than that, and the sound never came.

“That wall.”  Steve pointed to the partition wall near the window, hefted back his shield and threw it at the wall only to have it bounce straight off the wall onto the other side off the gym, onto the elevator door and back into his hand.  “The wall is one hundred and eighty seven feet away, made of steel and covered in dry wall.  We’re inside so there’s minimal drag.  I need it to hit while it’s still accelerating, so that it has the momentum to strike the opposite wall, but slow down as it reaches the lift so that it doesn’t imbed in the metal and makes it back to me.  I can lift around twelve hundred pounds, give or take.  But the maximum force with which I can throw the shield is probably closer to five thousand Newton’s than five and a half.  To make that run, I have to throw it with around half that force at a twelve point three degree angle to the wall, so that it hits with the required initial velocity, taking into considering the energy transfer with each impact.”

Tony blinked several times, and damn, Natasha had never seen the billionaire rendered speechless before.

“I, uh.  Every time?”  Steve nodded.

“Every single time.”  He said in a clipped tone.  And turned to walk out of the room.

“Well, fuck.”  Tony swore, and Natasha let out a silent laugh.

 

*****

**“** But he’s smart.  Like super smart.  Like…. Maybe our level of a smart.”  Tony explained, waving his hand around like a maniac.

“It was speculated that his mental acuity would be affected by the serum.”  Bruce replied, sounding distinctly nonplussed.

“Yes, but….” Tony waved his hand once more.  “How did no one ever notice it?”  Bruce shrugged.

“Project rebirth was more concerned with creating the ultimate soldier; the SSR’s tests were focused primarily on testing his strength.  It makes sense if you think about it, most everyone else would have been destroyed by losing seventy years, but he acclimatized almost scarily quickly.  He’s a master strategist and he’s incredibly perspective.”  The two scientists exchanged a look.

“I – just -” Tony struggled to find the words.

“Maybe you should talk to him if it bothers you that much?”  Bruce suggested, once again acting like Tony’s therapist.

“I – uh – it doesn’t bother you?”  Bruce merely shrugged.

“I could let a lot of things bother me, but then things around here wouldn’t look nearly as pretty.”  Bruce shot Tony a sly smile, and his fellow scientist smiled despite himself.

 

*****

 

“So you’re smart.”  Tony stated as he entered the room.  There was no point sugar coating it.   He might have asked Natasha to leave, but he was pretty sure that she knew all about his little freak out to Bruce.  She was sneaky like that.  Steve shrugged in a non-committal way.  “No, you’re a genius.”  Steve laughed.

“That’s more your area.”  Tony looked him up and down, as though he was seeing his fellow Avenger for the first time, and Steve sighed. 

“If you read my notes on arc reactor technology would you understand?”  Steve looked at Natasha who nodded in encouragement.

“Maybe, I don’t know.”  He ran a large hand through his blond hair, causing it to stick up at odd angles.  “I’ve never really tested it, I’ve got an eidetic memory but that doesn’t mean I understand it just means I can read something once and call back to it.”

“I know what it means.  I’m not an idiot.”  Steve rolled his eyes.

“No, you just assume everyone else is.”  Tony opened and closed his mouth a few times but could find no argument, and Natasha shot him a smug grin.  “Why does it matter?”  Tony had spent most of the previous week considering that particular notion and still failed to have an answer.

“You should have told us.”  That was the crux of the matter really.  Tony had never liked to be caught off-guard – he had always been the smartest one in the room.

“You never asked,” Steve countered, crossing his arms across his chest. 

“But if you’d just said…” he tried.

“Then what?”  Steve uncrossed his arms.  “Would you have treated me any better because I can do a few sums in my head?  Would it have made me less of a relic?  Would it have stopped the jokes at my expense being so funny?  I don’t think so.”  Natasha might have intervened but she was enjoying the argument a little too much.  Rogers was the only one who could deal with Stark quite so effectively.

“I’m -” he faltered.  “I’m not sorry.”

“I never said you had to be.  But you don’t like competition, and I like the quiet life.”  He stood up straight, using his height as a challenge to the smaller man.

“Is that a challenge?”  Steve rolled his eyes.

“ _You’re_ the genius Stark, not me.”

“Well apparently that’s up for debate.”  Tony huffed.  Sometimes, despite the fact that Tony had lived on the planet longer than him, Steve couldn’t help but think him as a child who needed constant encouragement to believe his own self-worth.  (And at least part of him was aware the blame for that fell largely at Howard’s feet.)

“You created Iron Man in a cave while you were imprisoned, you built the most advanced building in the entire world just because you felt like it, and you hacked into SHIELD in a matter of minutes. I couldn’t do that.”  A ghost of a smile passed over Tony’s features before he could help himself.  “It’s just a few sums, you don’t have to worry.”  The blond added gently as he turned to leave the room, effectively ending the conversation.

“You could have told me – us.”  Tony tried again, but his voice wasn’t angry.

“Well now you know, and we can all move on with our lives.”  Natasha said as she hopped down from the work surface she had been perched on and followed Steve out of the room, leaving Tony to mull over the situation.  At least by having the final word, she had deflected any residual anger from Steve onto herself.

 

*****

 

“So you’re a genius?  Certified and everything?”  Natasha said a few days later, after Steve had finally allowed Stark and Banner to conduct a barrage of tests.

“Natasha…” he said with a long-sufferingly, but she merely took a step into his personal space.

“I’ve already found intelligence attractive.”  She said with a coy smile.

“Oh, really?”  Steve replied, realizing what she was doing and joining her little game.

“Yeah,” she dragged the word out, looking up at him through hooded eyes.  “What’s the square root of one million, four hundred and thirty four thousand, three hundred and forty three?”

“Eleven hundred and ninety seven point six four.”  He said without pause, a smirk toying at the corners of his lips as he bent down to kiss her.

“Really?”  Clint dropped down his bag as he opened the door.  “I can’t even come into my own apartment without seeing you two making out?”  Steve, at least, had the decency to look abashed, but Natasha merely turned and shot him an unimpressed look.

“Don’t pretend you didn’t know we were here.”  The red-head replied. 

“You guys should be more careful, I don’t think Stark can cope with another big shock.  He’s getting on a bit he _does_ have a weak heart.”  The archer smirked, and Steve shot him a stern look.  “What?  For a genius, the guy is surprisingly slow on the update.  I don’t think you two could be any more obvious.”

“He was has a point, Nat.”  Steve said with a shrug.

“Yeah, because it didn’t take you long at all?”  She turned back to Steve and offered him a flirtatious smile.

“I’m romantically challenged.” 

“Not anymore.”  She said with a grin, and tip toed up to kiss him.

“You two make me sick.”  Clint pulled an over-exaggeratedly disgusted face and brushed past them to head further into his own apartment.  “You should get a room.”  He muttered as he disappeared into his kitchen.  “And _not_ mine.”  He added, poking his head around the doorway.

“You’re just giving me ideas, Barton.”  Nat replied, a wicked glint in her eyes.

“I hate you both.”


End file.
